#1. Our "peace partners" have made it very clear that if they fail to get what they want via negotiations that they believe they have the right to turn their guns against us.

#2. They also make it clear that the decision to opt to start killing Israelis is the efficacy of the move. In simple English: the day they conclude that killing Israelis will help them reach their goal they will pull the trigger. Again.

#3. They have illustrated their attitude towards the murder of Israelis by their demand that every single Palestinian now being held by Israel be freed - not extradited for incarceration by the PA - regardless of what they did - and regardless of what press release the PA issued at the time that they carried out their crime.

#4. Our "peace partners" refuse to acknowledge for the record any details of the inventories of weapons held either in the West Bank or Gaza Strip by a multitude of official, semi-official and other armed groups.

#5. Our "peace partners" also refuse to address the issue of achieving compliance with the weapons restrictions that were set in in the various agreements. Again in simple English: there are literally hundreds of
thousands of illegal weapons out there - including rockets, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles - whose existence is a gross violation of the agreements, and our "peace partners" refuse to make any commitment to remove them or to recognize that they are obligated to do so in areas under their control today or that they hope to have under their control in the future (e.g. if Fatah-Hamas unity is achieved).

#6. Equally disturbing: none of the above, at least judging by official statements of the the US or the Quartet, seems to be of any concern to the world at large.The opportunity for the Netanyahu administration: Abbas wants Israel to free murderers and give him more guns. Israel can respond with some very plain talk to bring some reality to the fore."Want to talk about guns? - Let's talk about guns. All the guns. We are eager to sit with the PA about the weapons now in the West Bank and Gaza Strip." ]

Official: PA security forces need arms to keep peace.

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Palestinian Authority security forces require regular armaments and supplies in order to keep peace and order in the West Bank, a Fatah official said Friday.Jamal Muheisin told Ma'an that weapons used by security forces naturally wear out after a period of time and, like police forces in other countries, need to be replaced.
A large portion of arms used by Palestinian security forces were destroyed in the second Intifada during Israeli incursions into the West Bank, Muheisin said.President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday said he would open dialogue with Israel if it re-armed Palestinian security forces.
"We recently told them that if Israel accepted to free prisoners and allow us to re-arm the police then we would again sit at the same table as Netanyahu," Abbas said during a visit to Paris.
Israel regularly coordinates with PA security forces and has a say on the degree to which they are armed and deployed.The Palestinian Authority is prevented from developing conventional military forces by Israel, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said in the past that any future Palestinian state must be demilitarized.Israel's 2011 defense expenditure was about 6 percent of its GDP. The United States contributes $3 billion every year to Israel's security budget.Reuters contributed to this report.Read the full story here.

Russian Foreign Minister: "Syria on Brink of Civil War" - Russian Arms for Syria No
Threat to Protesters.(RN).The situation in Syria is teetering on the brink of full-fledged civil conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday.
“It looks like Syria is on the brink of civil conflict,” he said.
At least 9,000 people have been killed in clashes between the government and opposition forces in Syria since the start of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad last year, according to UN estimates. UN special envoy Kofi Annan said on Thursday his six-point peace plan aimed at stopping the violence in Syria is "not being implemented."
The presence of a group of UN observers also had little impact on the situation. Annan warned of an escalating crisis and laid responsibility for the atrocities on al-Assad’s regime.
In order to help settle Syria’s ongoing political crisis, Russia has proposed a UN conference that will gather together the countries that have influence on Syria’s disparate forces.
The five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Syria’s neighbors – Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey - should take part, as well as representatives of the League of Arab States, Lavrov said.
He also said that Saudi Arabia and UN, EU diplomats should join the discussion.
Lavrov spoke in favor of Iran’s participation in the conference. “All forces that have influence on Syria should take part in the conference to make it effective. And Iran is one of the counties having real influence on the Syrian government.”
Earlier, the United States slammed the prospect of Iran’s role in the Syrian conflict settlement.
“We would like the conference to be open, with explicit discussion that will show whether there is a possibility to agree on coordinated… measures towards both the Syrian government and all of the country’s opposition groups,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov said disruptions in the implementation of Annan’s peace plan are to be blamed on the uncoordinated measures taken by outside forces. “Not only the Syrian government is responsible for what’s going on now, the crisis is also to be blamed on the actions of those people who have not stopped giving money to illegal armed groups, hire mercenaries, help transfer them abroad and flirt with extremists to reach their own goals.”
Lavrov said that participants of the conference will discuss ways to improve the details of Annan’s peace plan. “I do not think it is out of date. Moreover all of its points remain vital,” he said.
Moscow wants to hold this conference as soon as possible, but believes that expert meetings with representatives of other countries that also have influence on Syria should be held in advance of the conference.
Lavrov said Moscow has enough information proving that outside forces are in control of the actions of the Syrian opposition. “We have enough data that they supply arms and other vital items to the opposition.”The way the world is in future depends on the outcome of the Syrian crisis, the minister said.
China and Russia have twice blocked UN condemnations and punitive actions against al-Assad’s regime. Lavrov stressed that there are no grounds for Russia to change its stance on Syria.Hmmmm.....Lavrov: Russian Arms for Syria No Threat to Protesters".Read the full story here.

HT: MullOver. By Chris Muller
Honor is a hard term to describe. It doesn’t have a color or weight or shape. If someone were to ask me what honor looked like, I’d probably struggle with what to say.Read the full story here.

It’s D-Day and President Obama is hitting the beaches – of sunny California!
Instead of scheduling a brief event to mark the 68th anniversary of America’s brutal landing on the shores of Normandy, Obama is already on his way to San Francisco, where he will hold two fundraisers before moving on to Beverly Hills to stage two more.
Obama failed to mark D-Day with either a speech or a written proclamation both last year or the year before. He did give a speech in 2009, the 65th anniversary of the event.
First Lady Michelle Obama, who has made much of her “Joining Forces” campaign to support military families, also has nothing planned for D-Day. She’ll be in New York City for a fundraiser and then in Philadelphia to meet with campaign volunteers.
Obama’s failure to mark D-Day in any significant way is both a shame and a political mistake.
According to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, two critical swing states – Florida and Pennsylvania, are among the top five states in terms of veterans’ population. Within the top twelve are four others – Michigan, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina – all states Obama desperately needs to carry.
Hmmmm......"You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time."~ Abraham Lincoln.

Mossad: "Stuxnet is our Baby" Pres Obama disclosed it for electoral reasons.(TA).Israel’s officials have a message for anyone praising the CIA for its sophisticated cyber attack on Iran: It was our baby. The Stuxnet computer worm, described by David Sanger in The New York Times last week as an invention by the Bush administration, was actually developed by Mossad, according to Israeli officials speaking with Haaretz journalist Yossi Melman on condition of anonymity:

The Israeli officials actually told me a different version. They said that it was Israeli intelligence that began, a few years earlier, a cyberspace campaign to damage and slow down Iran’s nuclear intentions. And only later they managed to convince the USA to consider a joint operation — which, at the time, was unheard of.

The irony of course is that both U.S. and Israeli officials spent years denying knowledge of who carried out the attacks, which reportedly destroyed thousands of Iran’s centrifuges, ever since it became public in 2010. Now that it’s out, it’s time to claim credit! Of course, if you read Sanger’s account, he certainly doesn’t diminish the expertise of Israel’s spies:

Israel’s Unit 8200, a part of its military, had technical expertise that rivaled the N.S.A.’s, and the Israelis had deep intelligence about operations at Natanz that would be vital to making the cyberattack a success.

Regardless, these Israeli officials say Sanger’s account was too generous to the CIA. Amusingly, one of the officials tries to play it cool, in his remark to Melman:

My Israeli sources understand the sensitivity and the timing of the issue and are not going to be dragged into a battle over taking credit. “We know that it is the presidential election season,” one Israeli added, ”and don’t want to spoil the party for President Obama and his officials, who shared in a twisted and manipulated way some of the behind-the-scenes secrets of the success of cyberwar.”

Translation: We don’t need to tell anyone we’re the ones responsible for Stuxnet, but just so you know, we’re responsible for Stuxnet.Read the full story here.

Get ready for Higher Gas prices, Iran's representative to OPEC: "Saudi Arabia, allies drag world oil prices down".(TI).Iran's representative to OPEC attributed low oil prices to some members' violation of production quotas and economic problems confronting the U.S., Europe and some Asian countries.
Today, OPEC produces about 2 million barrels of oil a day over its official production ceiling, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quoets Mohammad Ali Khatibi as saying.
In December 2011, the organization's members agreed to put selling level of oil production at 30 million barrels a day of oil.
OPEC Statistics show that the organisation's output exceeded 31.621 million bpd in April.
Saudi Arabia and Iraq produce 9.897 million bpd and 3.025 million bpd of oil, respectively. The figures are 1.621 million bpd and 624,000 bpd more than the figures for 2010. This is while Iran's oil output has decreased by 510,000 bpd since 2010, according to OPEC reports.
Iraq announced that it will boost oil output by 400,000 bpd in the current year. Iran has always been opposed to any increase in the ceiling output, because increasing the output will decrease prices in the international market. The falling oil price has decreased Iran's oil revenues, a country highly dependent on oil exports.
Khatibi pointed to Saudi Arabia and its two allies, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as the biggest violators of OPEC's production ceiling and the primary cause of lower global oil prices. Khatibi said Saudi Arabia is pressured by the world's big oil consumers to calm the oil market and does so by boosting production.
Iran's Oil Minister, Rostam Ghasemi, has sent a letter protesting OPEC countries' acting against another member.
The 161st meeting of the Conference of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is to start on June 14 in Vienna.
Iran and some other OPEC members like Venezuela and Algeria will oppose pushing the organization's daily production ceiling from 30 million barrels a day to 31 million.
Yesterday, the price for a barrel of oil with a July delivery date dropped 72 cents to $84.10 on New York's Mercantile Exchange (NYSE).Hmmmm........Now just imagine if Iran becomes the next OPEC Secretary General.Read the full story here.

Changes in German Holocaust Education. (INN).Manfred Gerstenfeld interviews Susanne Urban.“Germany erected many memorials and museums at former concentration camps, as well as for murdered Jews. The extent of the attention given to Holocaust education in schools and other educational institutions is outstanding. At the same time, one also observes an increasing self-perception of Germans as victims – because of the Allied bombings, the flight and expulsion from Eastern Europe and so on. Furthermore, prejudices such as ‘the Jews still make money off the Holocaust; they use the Holocaust against Germany and Europe for their own benefit,’ continue to float around.”
Dr. Susanne Urban, an historian, is the Head of Historical Research in the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen, Germany. Before that, she worked for five years at Yad Vashem.
Urban observes: “Anti-Semitism is currently found among 20% of the German population. Since the year 2000, anti-Semitic attitudes have often turned against the State of Israel and therefore contain both anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Successful Holocaust education is hampered when comparisons between the Warsaw Ghetto and the situation in Gaza or Israeli soldiers and Wehrmacht soldiers abound in media, in the public sphere and afterwards in schools.
“Colleagues told me about cases of students with migration backgrounds who left the classroom because the Holocaust was on the agenda.
Studies such as those by the Amadeo-Antonio-Foundation underline that these attitudes occur in the context of a self-perception which is often based on a confrontation between ‘us’ and ‘the West’ accompanied by a rejection against everything Jewish / Israeli – and therefore also against Holocaust education.
“Educators should ask themselves: ‘How can we initiate an interest in the Holocaust for students not born in Germany or with a migration background?’ There are many angles through which educators may connect these students to the Holocaust. One way is through Muslim rescuers in Albania who saved nearly all of the Jews in the country. Another is through the experiences of North African Jews or Jews who found shelter in Turkey.
Another example comes from ITS documents: an Italian citizen – Muslim – fought with Italian partisans against the Nazis and was then registered as a Displaced Person in Italy. He didn’t want to live in Europe any more after what he had experienced during the German occupation. There is thus a connection between the Muslim world and the events between 1933 and 1945, both in examples of help and rescue but also on the other side – if one thinks about the Muslim SS-formations of Haj Amin al-Husseini – the Mufti of Jerusalem – who sent out his propaganda from Berlin.
“The Holocaust was an event which crossed borders and went global.
This demonstrates the fundamental recognition that history concerns human beings from various backgrounds, of differing religions and perspectives on the world.
“Recent opinion polls show that even pedagogic students have only meager awareness about events such as Auschwitz and the Holocaust. In January 2012, the Stern magazine published its findings of a survey.Ninety percent of Germans know about Auschwitz and were able to connect the name to the camp. Yet only 21% of those aged between 18 and 29 know about Auschwitz. A third of those interviewed didn’t know that Auschwitz is in Poland. Forty three percent have never visited a memorial site of a former concentration camp.
“
On the positive side: in 1994, 53% in Germany longed to consider the Nazi-past and the Holocaust as history without actual importance. Today this number has dropped to 40%. This is probably related to the fact that the generation of bystanders, perpetrators and profiteers is dying out. But 40% is still a high number, as these people are not willing to share responsibility for remembrance and the legacy of the survivors. This also has to do with the fact that 65% emphasize that Germany does not carry any special responsibility toward other nations because of its history. This gets further relief if one considers the widespread anti-Israel attitude in the country.
“A current lesson from history is that we have the responsibility not to be bystanders in other genocides. The world failed in Rwanda. In addition, the threats of genocide – such as those made by Iran against Israel — should not go unanswered.”
Urban concludes: “There is an urgent need to clearly define the common goals of Holocaust education. It should give the victims their stories and history back. One should read and listen to their perspectives as a counterpart to the perpetrators’ views. Youngsters should learn to take responsibility for their own opinions and actions. The stories of Righteous Gentiles should be taught to demonstrate that one does have a choice and that life is not deterministic. All victims and survivors and all helpers and rescuers participated in European culture, enriched societies and contributed to their countries. At the ITS we have over 30 million documents. From them, one can learn to teach and find one’s way to be active, engaged and alert. Remembrance must be future-orientated, yet also be connected with responsibility for today.”Hmmmm........"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. Read the full story here.

U.K. - Forced marriage: 120 cases a month this year as David Cameron outlaws ‘virtual slavery’.(Telegraph).
The Home Office released details of the caseload of the Government’s dedicated Forced Marriage Unit showing that it has been handling around 120 cases a month.
The figures suggest a rise in the number children under threat of forced marriage, with 14 per cent of those dealt with aged under 15, compared with 10 per cent last year.
There was also a handful of homosexual people fearing they are being forced into a marriage and 25 of those who came forward were disabled, some severely.
But the figures are thought to be the tip of the iceberg with some estimates suggesting the real instance of forced marriage could be up to five times that amount.
Mr Cameron and Theresa May, the Home Secretary, are announcing plans to make forced marriage a crime today after rejecting claims that banning the practice would simply drive it underground.There will also be a new publicity campaign and extra training for social workers, police, lawyers and judges to help them spot the signs.
But campaigners last night warned that the plans look set to fail to tackle a key loophole in the law which could be behind hundreds of forced marriages a year involving vulnerable people with learning difficulties.
Mandy Sanghera, a campaigner on honour violence who has advised the home office on forced marriage, said that people who lack the capacity to consent to marriage are routinely being allowed to sponsor visa applications for would-be spouses without query. Mr Cameron said: “Forced marriage is abhorrent and is little more than slavery.
“To force anyone into marriage against their will is simply wrong and that is why we have taken decisive action to make it illegal.
“I have listened to concerns that criminalisation could force this most distressing issue underground.
“That is why we have a new comprehensive package to identify possible victims, support those who have suffered first hand and, indeed, prevent criminality wherever possible.”Read the full story here.

Hate Song ‘I Love Israel’ Latest Craze in Islamic Egypt.(INN).A hate song with the deceiving title of “I Love Israel” has become the latest craze in Egypt, The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported.
The singer, Amr El Masry, begins by repeating the phrase, “I love Israel.”
The lyrics read as follows:
“May it [Israel] be destroyed. May it be colonized. May it be wiped off the map. May a wall fall on it. May it disappear from the universe. God, please have it banished.”
During the duration of the song, the chorus of “I love Israel” is repeatedly interjected.
“May it dangle from the noose. May I get to see it burning, Amen. I will pour gasoline on it. I am an Egyptian man. I am not a coward.”
“May it be targeted. May it go up in flames that will never subside. From the bottom of my heart – may a wall fall on it,” the song continues.
“May it destroy itself. May we never hear of it again. May it destroy itself. May we never hear of it again. May it cease to exist, not even on the border. May they say on the news that there is no more destruction.”
El Masry concludes the song by stating, “My heart is broken under my smoking jacket. I see that you are occupied, so I'm off. Goodbye.”
Another song by the Egyptian Shaaban abd el Rehim, released in 2000 and titled “I Hate Israel” espouses the same vehemently anti-Israel sentiments, yearning for the obliteration of the Jewish state.
The two songs caused controversy, but managed to pass the Egyptian censors. Shaaban's songs, due to his poor background, informal language, and direct lyrics have made him popular with the Egyptian public.Hmmmmm.......I'm sure the extra 125 M1-Abrams tanks Obama is giving Egypt will be greatly appreciated.Read the full story here.

IAEA says no progress in nuclear talks with Iran.(JPost).The UN nuclear watchdog and Iran failed at talks on Friday to unblock a probe into suspected atom bomb research by the Islamic state, a setback dimming any chances for success in higher-level negotiations between Iran and major powers later this month.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, using unusually pointed language, said no progress had been made in the talks aimed at sealing a deal on resuming the IAEA's long-stalled investigation, and it described the outcome as "disappointing."
The setback came just a few weeks after UN nuclear chief Yukiya Amano said he had won assurances from senior Iranian officials in Tehran that an agreement would be struck soon.
Herman Nackaerts, the IAEA's global head of inspections, said after the eight-hour meeting at IAEA headquarters in Vienna that no date for further discussions on the matter had been set.
The IAEA had been pressing Tehran for an accord that would give its inspectors immediate access to the Parchin military complex, where it believes explosives tests relevant for the development of nuclear arms have taken place and suspects Iran may now be cleaning the site of any incriminating evidence.
The United States, European powers and Israel want to curb Iranian nuclear activities they fear are intended to produce nuclear bombs. The Islamic Republic says its nuclear program is meant purely to produce energy for civilian uses.
Six world powers were scrutinizing the IAEA-Iran meeting to judge whether the Iranians were ready to make concessions before a resumption of wider-ranging discussions with them in Moscow on June 18-19 on the decade-old nuclear dispute.
The lack of result may heighten Western suspicions that Iran is seeking to drag out the two sets of talks to buy time for its uranium enrichment program, without backing down in the face of international demands that it suspend its sensitive work.
"It should by now be clear to everyone that Iran is not negotiating in good faith," a senior Western diplomat said.
Nackaerts said the IAEA had come to the meeting with a desire to finalize the deal and had presented a revised draft that addressed earlier stated concerns by Iran.
"However, there has been no progress," he told reporters.
"And indeed Iran raised issues that we have already discussed and added new ones. This is disappointing. A date for a follow-on meeting has yet to be fixed."
"This situation is reminiscent of the Peanuts cartoon of Charlie Brown repeatedly believing Lucy this time will hold the football for him to kick, with her always snatching it away at the last minute, leaving him to fall flat."Hmmmmm......"Timeeeee is on my side!....Yes it is".Read the full story here.

U.N. monitors claim smelling ‘burnt flesh’, seeing blood on walls in Syria’s Qubair.(AA).U.N. observers who traveled to the Syrian massacre village of al-Qubair saw blood on the walls and were hit by a “stench of burnt flesh” but could not confirm the death toll, a spokesman said Friday.
While the Syrian government has denied responsibility of the massacre in al-Qubair, U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said the observers saw armored vehicle tracks around the village and homes that were damaged by rockets, grenades and various weapons.
“Inside some of the houses, blood was visible across the walls and floors. Fire was still burning outside houses and there was a strong stench of burnt flesh,” the spokesman said in a grim account of the visit.
The U.N. observers said that “the circumstances surrounding this attack are still unclear.” The observers had been trying to reach Qubair, a tiny farming village of about 150 people since Thursday but had been shot at and turned back by both security forces and residents.
At least 55 people were killed on Wednesday in an assault on Qubair in Hama province, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
U.N. officials have made it clear they believe government forces and allies were behind the attack on a mainly Sunni Muslim village surrounded by an Alawite population loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.
The village was empty when they went in there and so monitors were unable to talk to any witnesses of the attack, which has led to calls for tougher action against President Assad.
Nesirky said people from a nearby village came “and spoke of what they had heard and the relatives they had lost.
“Armored vehicle tracks were visible in the vicinity. Some homes were damaged by rockets from armored vehicles, grenades and a range of caliber weapons,” Nesirky said.
“The circumstances surrounding this attack are still unclear. The names, details and number of those killed are still not confirmed. The observers are still working to ascertain the facts,” he said.
Nesirky said that Syrian army checkpoints had “stopped” and “in some cases turned back” the observers who made “multiple attempts” to get into Qubair on Thursday.
“Some of the patrols were being stopped by civilians in the area,” he added. The monitors were also told by residents that their “safety was at risk” if they entered the village.
According to preliminary evidence, government troops surrounded Qubair and militia entered the village and killed civilians with “barbarity,” U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, according to diplomats at a closed briefing.
Qubair was the second major massacre in Syria in two weeks. At least 108 people ̶ including 49 were killed when forces attacked the town of Houla on May 25. The government has denied any role in both slaughters.
Opposition activists and Syrian government officials blamed each other for the killings and differed about the number of dead.Read and see (Video) the full story here.

Research and Analysis Corporation expert "EU in Worst Conditions to Ban Iran's Oil".(Fars)."The EU is at its worst possible conditions," Director of the Environment, Energy, and Economic Development program at the RAND Research and Analysis Corporation Keith Crane told FNA.
He downplayed effectiveness of western boycotts against Iran, and said, "Countries are able to bypass economic sanctions."
Crane mentioned that big and numerous problems facing major banks have endangered the world monetary system, and thus the system cannot tolerate any more risks and pressures to be created by sanctioning one of the most important world oil producers.
In relevant remarks late 2011, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman had also said that the European Union is not in a good shape to impose a ban on oil imports from Iran, but meantime had underlined that if such an embargo is exerted on Iran, it would fail to produce any good result for the West.
"Sanctions will have no impact on our nation and will rather give more motivation to our nation,"
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast said in an interview with the state-run TV at the time.
"Meantime Europe is grappling with acute crisis and its (EU) members have deep differences now," he added.
"They will sustain more harms if they impose such an oil embargo (on Iran)," Mehman-Parast stated.
He also said such moves can never deprive the Iranian nation of its rights, otherwise the EU would start sanctions on Iran's oil supply.
"Surely, if they had had the ability and if they had thought that they could deprive our nation of its rights through these sanctions, they would have done it by now," he added.
The EU in January embargoed purchases of Iranian crude but let those with existing contracts continue importing until July 1.Hmmmm.......Reminds me is Turkey Obama's BFF still importing 55 % of it's oil from Iran?Read the full story here.

Related: India cuts May Iran oil imports 38 pct-trade.Indian refiners cut imports from Iran by 38 percent in May from a year ago, tanker discharge data showed, in a second month of steep reductions as they switch suppliers to cushion the impact of new U.S. sanctions on Tehran, Reuters reported.
The cutbacks raise New Delhi's chances of winning a waiver similar to that granted by the United States to Japan and some European countries after "substantial" reductions in their imports.
India is discussing with Washington an exemption from the sanctions, which focus on banking and are being imposed over Iran's disputed nuclear programme, a source said last month.
China and India are Iran's biggest crude clients and reductions in their purchases are crucial to Western attempts to crank up the pressure on Tehran. Neither has officially sought a waiver, although both have cut volumes.Among Iran's other Asian buyers, South Korea plans to halt all imports by the time the European measures hit, industry sources have said, and Japan could follow suit unless Tokyo provides a sovereign insurance guarantee for oil tankers.Hmmmmm......WHY Does nobody mention Obama's BFF Turkey their imports???Read the full story here.

Obama 'Administration' admits to ‘hundreds’ of meetings with Muslim Brotherhood-linked group CAIR.(DC).President Barack Obama’s deputies are holding “hundreds” of closed-door meetings with a jihad-linked lobbying group that is widely derided by critics as a U.S. arm of the theocratic Muslim Brotherhood.
The admission of meetings with the Council on American-Islamic Relations came from George Selim, the White House’s new director for community partnerships, which was formed in January to ensure cooperation by law enforcement and social service agencies with Muslim identity groups in the United States.
“There is hundreds of examples of departments and agencies that meet with CAIR on a range of issues,” he told The Daily Caller, after being asked if his office refuses to meet with any Muslim groups.
CAIR is “the group with the worst record of deception and the deepest ties to terrorists,” said Steven Emerson, the director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which tracks the public activities of Islamist lobbying groups.
“The White House is so clueless and/or compromised” when dealing with the brotherhood, said Robert Spencer, the author of several books about Islam and jihad. CAIR, he said, is “the political front of a radically repressive, Jew-hating, woman-hating organization.”
The House of Representatives last month prodded the Department of Justice to end all contacts with CAIR.
“The [appropriations] committee understands that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has an existing policy prohibiting its employees from engaging in any formal non-investigative cooperation with CAIR [and] the committee encourages the attorney general to adopt a similar policy for all department officials,” said the committee report accompanying the 2013 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill, passed in mid-May by the House.
However, the White House’s cooperation with Muslim groups complements the Democratic Party’s diversity strategy.
That strategy seeks to accumulate votes from a discordant variety of minority groups, including Muslims and feminists, Jews, gays, Latinos and African-Americans. The party’s Muslim outreach is focused on Michigan and Illinois, which are home to significant numbers of Muslim immigrants.
CAIR is especially controversial because of its many links to the theocratic Muslim Brotherhood, whose political wing is set to dominate Egyptian politics since the 2011 departure of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak.
In 2009, a judge confirmed the Justice Department’s decision to name CAIR as an unindicted conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation conspiracy to smuggle funds to HAMAS, which is a jihadi affiliate of the Egypt-based brotherhood. Five men in the smuggling ring were sentenced to jail in 2009, including two who were given 65-year sentences.
HAMAS controls the Gaza Strip between Egypt and Israel. It has launched thousands of missile attacks against Jewish residents in Israel, because it believes Israel’s territory should be ruled by Muslims.
CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper refused to comment when called by TheDC.Hmmmm......Obama : "“A man is judged by his deeds, not his words.” So if you want to know where my heart lies, look no further than what I have done — to stand up for Israel.".......Yup it's obvious.Read the full story here.More here.

Rep. Issa Exposes the Obama Administration's Green Jobs Scam.(Forbes).Does the teenage kid who sells used records count as someone who has a green job? What about an oil lobbyist, or someone who works at an antique shop? Those all count as “Green Jobs” according to the Obama Administration’s top statistician at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The “Green Jobs” initiative cost $38.6 billion or $5 million per job and now through the Oversight Committee’s work we are learning more about how the Obama administration gambled away tax payer dollars to support their ideological interests. Take a look at the Oversight Committee’s excerpt video above.Nearly every myth they highlighted has since been proven to be just that, a myth, founded on nothing but ideology.
Solyndra and the dubious counting methods employed by the Obama Administration are just further proof of the Green Jobs Scam. Indeed, as Morris et.al., predicted “To attempt to transform modern society on the scale proposed by the green jobs literature is an effort of staggering complexity and scale. To do so based on the wishful thinking and bad economics embodied in the green jobs literature would be the height of irresponsibility.” In light of the dubious counting methods employed by BLS, it seems the Green Jobs Scam was indeed the height of irresponsibility.Read the full story here.

Obama 'Israel's staunchest ally' holds talks with ‘anti-Israel' preacher.(JPost).By Benjamin Weinthal.Christians United for Israel executive-director David Brog tells 'Post' that preacher Serge Duss holds views “very offensive to Jews and Bible-believing Christians.”
The head of one of the most prominent pro-Israel Christian organizations in the United States slammed the White House on Wednesday for agreeing to several meetings with an “anti-Israel” preacher who denies that Jews have a historical link to Israel.
According to the online news outlet Washington Free Beacon, preacher Serge Duss “propagates borderline anti- Semitic conspiracy theories and advises several groups that have stigmatized the Israeli government – [and] has made at least four trips to the Obama White House for several high-level powwows with top administration officials, records show.”
In a telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), commented on Duss’s form of theology. “It is troubling, in that he seems to embrace an odd race-based replacement theology; he seems to be saying that Jews are not connected to Bible.” He added that Duss slandered the “Christian faith of millions around the world.
[He is] not committed to peace and reconciliation.”
Asked about Duss’s connection with Washington, Brog said it “makes one worry” because it leads to “concerns that policy is being driven by those who have rejectionist views of Israel and are outside of the peace consensus.”
“We support the democratically elected government of Israel. The current government has expressed a commitment to a two-state solution,” he stressed. “We fear that Serge Duss does not share the goal of a safe Israel.”
Ari Morgenstern, a spokesman for Christians United for Israel , told the Post that "CUFI supports Israel's right to decide how to achieve peace and security for its citizens, free from all outside pressure."
Brog emphasized this to the Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo, who first exposed the meetings between Duss and White House officials: “Serge Duss is associated with the most extreme aspects of Arab rejectionism. [He] has denied the connection between the modern Jewish people and those of the Bible.”If the Obama administration is truly committed “to supporting Israel in its quest for peace,” Brog asked, “why are they taking advice from someone who parrots the worst rhetoric of those who oppose accommodation with Israel?” Kredo’s investigative reports showed that Duss had “a series of high-level sit-downs with the Obama administration’s liaison to Arab-Americans, as well as with two of the president’s most trusted foreign policy advisers, according to White House visitor logs.”
In an email to the Post on Friday, Matt Lehrich, a White House spokesman, wrote the"White House staff meets with thousands of people each month. We don't apologize to anybody for the President's unshakeable commitment to Israel's security - a commitment he reiterated twice in the past two weeks at meetings with Conservative and Orthodox Jewish leaders."Hmmmmm..........But I’m also mindful of the proverb, “A man is judged by his deeds, not his words.” So if you want to know where my heart lies, look no further than what I have done — to stand up for Israel.".....Yup pretty obvious......A MAN IS KNOWN BY THE COMPANY HE KEEPS. AND BY THEIR FRUITS YOU WILL KNOW THEM!~ Matthew 7:16.Read the full story here.

"The War on women after Mubarak" - Egypt women to stand against escalating sexual violence in Tahrir Square.(BM).HT: CriticalAnalyst.CAIRO: After recent reports of reoccurring sexual assaults on women in Egypt’s iconic Tahrir Square, 20 women’s groups and organizations called for a stand Friday evening to protest the recent attacks against women.Tens of women reported being sexually harassed during the past four days in Tahrir, including two women who were attacked and surrounded by a mob of about a 100 men.
The men groped the girls, separated them from each other and attempted to tear their clothes off.
The girls were freed from the mob and an Associated Press female reporter said she witnessed the attacks, saying she almost fell victim to the same mob if she was not pulled to safety by a colleague.
A newly created online initiative titled “Securing the Square” aims to draw volunteers to protect women visitors to the square, but still struggles with finding enough numbers to join.
The online initiative HarassMap confirmed the lack of safety in the squre, naming the area outside the fast food chain Hardee’s, at the intersection of Mohamed Mahmoud street and the square, to be one of the worst areas in the square and warned women to keep their guard up while visiting.
“The unprecedented level of violence confirmed by eyewitnesses against women in the square is worrisome,” read the call to protest on its Facebook page.
“Some starting to believe that it is an organized effort to eliminate women from the protesting sphere,” the statement added.
Eyewitnesses confirmed tens of assaults on women, more often in the hours of the evening, where there are less people in general.
Sexual harassment, which is widespread across Egypt is considered by many as a modern social plague. A 2008 study by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR) found that well over two thirds of Egyptian women are sexually harassed on daily basis.
Weak legal measures and police pacifism and tolerance towards attackers contributes greatly to the problem.
Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the Egyptian uprising, is expected to host the protest outside Hardee’s at 6 PM on Friday.Read the full story here.

Is the Guardian the most bigoted newspaper in Britain?(CriticalAnalyst).
(The Commentator).On Friday, the Guardian ran a piece in its opinion section by none other than Ismail Haniyeh, leader of Hamas in Gaza and now, it appears, a perfectly acceptable room-mate for the leading voice in Britain’s Liberal-Left.
The decision to give a platform to a leader of Jew-hating Hamas shows the Guardian is now wallowing in and drinking from the sewer of history.
Direct quotations from the Hamas Charter (source: Yale Law School)

“ Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).“

“Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's victory is realised.“

“The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: ‘The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).“

Let’s not even get into the question of Hamas‘s attitude to gays and women – they support hanging the former and suppressing the latter. (By the way, it’s the gay pride festival today in Tel Aviv, and of course Gaza – no, sorry that last bit was a joke, a sick one, but not as sick as the Guardian editors who commissioned Hamas to write a piece for them.Read the full story here.

Ostensibly dealing with a building, a recent report demonstrates how Turkey's populace—once deemed the most secular and liberal in the Muslim world—is reverting to its Islamic heritage, complete with animosity for the infidel West and dreams of Islam's glory days of jihad and conquest. According to Reuters:

Thousands of devout Muslims prayed outside Turkey's historic Hagia Sophia museum on Saturday [May 23] to protest a 1934 law that bars religious services at the former church and mosque. Worshippers shouted, "Break the chains, let Hagia Sophia Mosque open," and "God is great" [the notorious "Allahu Akbar"] before kneeling in prayer as tourists looked on. Turkey's secular laws prevent Muslims and Christians from formal worship within the 6th-century monument, the world's greatest cathedral for almost a millennium before invading Ottomans converted it into a mosque in the 15th century.

Hagia Sophia—Greek for "Holy Wisdom"—was, in fact, Christendom's greatest cathedral for a thousand years. Built in Constantinople, the heart of the Christian empire, it was also a stalwart symbol of defiance against an ever encroaching Islam from the east. After parrying centuries of jihadi thrusts, Constantinople was finally sacked by Ottoman Turks in 1453. Its crosses desecrated and icons defaced, Hagia Sophia—as well as thousands of other churches—was immediately converted into a mosque, the tall minarets of Islam surrounding it in triumph. Then, after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, as part of several reforms, Ataturk transformed Hagia Sophia into a "neutral" museum in 1934—a gesture of goodwill to the then triumphant West from a then crestfallen Turkey.
Even though Hagia Sophia is a Christian center under Islamic domination, several Christian authorities are content seeing it remain a museum, including the Ecumenical Patriarchate, spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians: "We want it to remain a museum in line with the Republic of Turkey's principles," adding, "if it became a church it would be chaos."
True enough; one need only recall how back in 2006, when Pope Benedict was scheduled to visit Hagia Sophia, Muslims were outraged. Then, Turkey's independent paper Vatan wrote: "The risk is that Benedict will send Turkey's Muslims and much of the Islamic world into paroxysms of fury if there is any perception that the Pope is trying to re-appropriate a Christian center that fell to Muslims." Before the Pope's visit, a gang of Turks stormed and occupied Hagia Sophia, screaming "Allahu Akbar!" and warning "Pope! Don't make a mistake; don't wear out our patience." On the day of the Pope's visit, another throng of Islamists waved banners saying "Pope get out of Turkey" while chanting Hagia Sophia "is Turkish and will remain Turkish."
All this is yet another reminder of the Islamic world's double standards: when Muslims conquer non-Muslim territories, such as Constantinople and its churches—through fire and steel, with all the attendant human suffering and misery—the descendents of those conquered are not to expect any apologies or concessions. However, once the same Muslims who would never concede one inch of Islam's conquests, including buildings, are on the short end of the stick—Palestinians vis-à-vis Israel, for example—then they resort to the United Nations and the court of public opinion, demanding justice, restitutions, rights, and so forth. (See this 2006 LA Times Op-Ed for more on this theme.)
Even in the brief Reuter's report, evidence of such "passive-aggressive" behavior emerges. First, this is not about Muslims wanting to pray; it's about Muslims wanting to revel in the glory days of Islamic jihad and conquest: Muslims "staged the prayers ahead of celebrations next week marking the 559th anniversary of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet's conquest of Byzantine Constantinople." According to Salih Turhan, a spokesman quoted by Reuters, "As the grandchildren of Mehmet the Conqueror, seeking the re-opening Hagia Sophia as a mosque is our legitimate right."
Sultan Mehmet was the scourge of European Christendom, whose Islamic hordes seized and ravished Constantinople, forcibly turning it Islamic. Openly idolizing him, as many Turks do, is tantamount to their saying "We are proud of our ancestors who killed and stole the lands of Christians." And yet, despite such militant overtones, Turhan, whose position is echoed by many Turks, still manages to blame the West: "Keeping Hagia Sophia Mosque closed is an insult to our mostly Muslim population of 75 million. It symbolizes our ill-treatment by the West."
If merely keeping a historically Christian/Western building—that was stolen by Islamic jihad—as a neutral museum is seen as "ill-treatment by the West," on what basis can Muslims and non-Muslims ever "dialogue"?

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

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“We will hold sacred the beliefs held sacred by others.” - Obama's State Department Purges Section on Religious Freedom from Its Human Rights Reports.(CNS).HT: AlwaysOnWatch.The U.S. State Department removed the sections covering religious freedom from the Country Reports on Human Rights that it released on May 24, three months past the statutory deadline Congress set for the release of these reports.
The new human rights reports--purged of the sections that discuss the status of religious freedom in each of the countries covered--are also the human rights reports that cover the period that covered the Arab Spring and its aftermath.
Thus, the reports do not provide in-depth coverage of what has happened to Christians and other religious minorities in predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East that saw the rise of revolutionary movements in 2011 in which Islamist forces played an instrumental role.
For the first time ever, the State Department simply eliminated the section of religious freedom in its reports covering 2011 and instead referred the public to the 2010 International Religious Freedom Report – a full two years behind the times – or to the annual report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which was released last September and covers events in 2010 but not 2011.
Leonard Leo, who recently completed a term as chairman of the USCIRF, says that removing the sections on religious freedom from the State Department's Country Reports on Human Roghts is a bad idea.
Since 1998, when Congress created USCIRF, the State Department has been required to issue a separate yearly report specifically on International Religious Freedom.
But a section reporting on religious freedom has also always been included in the State Department's legally required annual country-by-country reports on human rights--that is, until now.
And this is the first year the State Department would have needed to report on the effect the Arab Spring has had on religious freedom in the Middle East--had its reports, as always before, included a section on religious freedom.
“The commission that I served on has some real concerns about that bifurcation, because the human rights reports receive a lot of attention, and to have pulled religious freedom out of it means that fewer people will obtain information about what’s going on with that particular freedom or right. So you don’t have the whole picture because they split it up now,” Leo told CNSNews.com.
Former U.S. diplomat Thomas Farr says it’s possible that the move to totally separate religious freedom from the human rights reports could simply be a bureaucratic maneuver.
But another possibility is much more likely.
“The other possibility is the Obama administration is downplaying international religious freedom,” Farr said.
Far more resources have been allocated by the Obama administration to other human rights issues than have been directed toward religious freedom.
“(T)he ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, for example, who is the official charged by the law to lead U.S. religious freedom policy, did not even step foot into her office until two-and-a-half years were gone of a four-year administration,” he said.
“Whereas other human rights priorities of the administration, such as the ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, were in place within months. So that tells you something.“It tells me that this has never been a priority for the Obama administration, and it’s not now,”he said.
“So it seems to me plausible to at least question the removal of religious freedom from the human rights report, although, as I say, there could be other explanations, less insidious, if you will.”The State Department, meanwhile, has given no indication of when -- or if -- the next International Religious Freedom Report will be released. Hmmmmm........Try Never...Obama “I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”Read the full story here.

'Baltic Sea UFO' Relocated, "There is definitely something unusual hiding at the seabed".(Gathner).The so-called "Baltic Sea UFO" has been relocated by divers on the research vessel Ocean Explorer and reports confirm there is a massive object on the seabed in the exact location found on sonar last year.
The research vessel, aka the OceanX, has returned to the spot off the Swedish coast where a gigantic, sunken object was spotted on video last November.
Images posted to the web stirred a gigantic debate about its origins, going so far as to speculate it bore an uncanny resemblance to the "Millennium Falcon" spaceship at the center of the Star Wars saga.
Others calmly pointed out that the massive, circular object was either a natural formation or the remains of Russian warships sunk to the bottom decades, maybe even a century ago.The original
research team, led by Peter Lindberg, who was scouring the area for sunken
treasure last year, decided to return to the coordinates with sophisticated
sonar and video equipment to have a closer look in the calmer waters of
June.

The vessel is
also carrying a team of deep sea divers ready to go down for the hands-on
approach to decide if this mysterious object is indeed a Baltic Sea UFO.

A breaking news dispatch from the ship on Thursday confirms
that the object is real and located in the same position.

It goes on to
announce that "The divers are now down and investigating the circle and reports
from the ship say they are really amazed. There is definitely something unusual
hiding at the seabed - a Mystery Beneath. More information and pictures will be
released next week."

The tantalizing
dispatch has caused consternation in the many followers of the mission, and
comments on the news site already hint at conspiracy and coverup.

It remains to be
seen exactly what this immense object really is, but further details which may
solve the mystery are only a week away.........weather permitting.Read the full story here.

NDAA unconstitutional: Federal judge bans Obama from indefinitely detaining Americans.(RT).Sorry, Mr. President. A US Federal judge has clarified a decision made last month with some news sure to upset the Obama administration: the White House cannot use the NDAA to indefinitely detain American citizens.
Judge Katherine B. Forrest has answered a request made by US President Barack Obama last month to more carefully explain a May 16 ruling made in a Southern District of New York courtroom regarding the National Defense Authorization Act. Clarifying the meaning behind her injunction, Judge Forrest confirms in an eight-page memorandum opinion this week that the NDAA’s controversial provision that permits indefinite detention cannot be used on any of America's own citizens.
Last month Judge Forrest ruled in favor of a group of journalists and activists whom filed a suit challenging the constitutionality of Section 1021 of the NDAA, a defense spending bill signed into law by President Obama on New Year’s Eve. Specifically, Judge Forrest said in her injunction that the legislation contained elements that had a "chilling impact on First Amendment rights” and ruled that no, the government cannot imprison Americans over suspected ties with terrorists. "In the face of what could be indeterminate military detention, due process requires more,” said the judge.The Obama administration responded nine days later by asking Judge Forrest to reconsider her ruling, adding that, in the interim, the government would interpret the injunction to mean that only the few plaintiffs listed on the lawsuit would be excluded from indefinite detention. One of those named, journalist Chris Hedges, had previously said, “I have had dinner more times than I can count with people whom this country brands as terrorists … but that does not make me one.”
Responding to the White House’s demands, Judge Forrest writes in a June 6 memo, “Put more bluntly, the May 16 order enjoined enforcement of Section 1021(b)(2) against anyone until further action by this, or a higher, court — or by Congress. This order should eliminate any doubt as to the May 16 order’s scope.”
Judge Forrest does include in her ruling, however, that Americans can be indefinitely detained, but only providing that the government can link suspects directly to the September 11 terrorist attacks. Attorney Carl Meyer represented the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and told RT last month that he expected the Obama administration to challenge Judge Forrest’s ruling, but warned that “it may not be in their best interest because there are so many people from all sides of the political spectrum opposed to this law.”
Previously, state lawmakers in both Utah and Virginia have proposed legislation that would negate provisions of the NDAA on a local level.Read the full story here.

Farmers to be Paid to Stop Cows Farting? New Carbon Credit Plan Floated.(HL).Canadian farmers could soon be enjoying a lucrative new income from their
cattle, if plans for a new “carbon credits” scheme are successful.
CBC News is reporting
that Cedric Mcleod, an agricultural economist and founder of Mcleod Agronomics.
is being paid by a private research institute to measure and record the
“greenhouse gas” emissions of selected Canadian farms with a view to try and
reduce them, and sell the difference as “carbon credits”:

MacLeod hopes to have a clear picture of the
gas profile of New Brunswick dairy farms by the end of the year and will rank
them from worst to best by comparing to a baseline from previous years.

“Then we’ll be able to say, ‘Look, on these
50 dairy farms, we found say, you know 100 tonnes of carbon credits per farm,
times 50, there’s 5,000 tonnes of carbon. Who’s interested? Who wants to show
some corporate responsibility?’

As a scientific report for the private institute notes, the possibility
of selling carbon credits from reducing “emissions” from dairy farms is a
win-win situation as bigger, more efficient farms will reduce their emissions
naturally, so being paid on an ongoing basis for this is a huge added bonus.
Funding for the research carried out by the private institute was provided by
the Canadian Government through the agency of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Canada.Hmmmm.......I need a stiff drink after reading this.Read the full story here.

Al-Qaeda leader’s wife: "Arab Spring will soon become Islamic Spring".(AA).The wife of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri praised Muslim women for their role in the Arab Spring uprisings and said the unrest would soon lead to an “Islamic Spring,” according to a rare message posted online on Friday.
The letter, signed by Omaima Hassan, singled out women beaten during Egypt’s unrest and lauded mothers for bringing up the revolutionaries who went on to topple four heads of state it described as “tyrant criminals.”
It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the undated message, posted on a website used by Islamist militants.
Since the start of the Arab Spring, there has been signs that al-Qaeda has tried to capitalize on the unrest.
“I congratulate all females of the world for these blessed revolutions and I salute every mother who sacrificed her loved ones in the revolutions. It is really an Arab Spring and will soon become an Islamic Spring,” reads the message.
“These revolutions toppled the tyrant criminals, and thanks to your efforts, patience and raising your sons in dignity,” it added.
The message urged Muslim women to keep wearing the veil. “The veil is the Muslim woman’s identity and the West wants to remove this identity so she will be without an identity.”
“My advice to you sisters is to raise your children on the love of martyrdom ... and to prepare them for restoring the glories of Islam and the liberation of Jerusalem,” the statement added.According to the message posted on Friday, Hassan said she hoped that the uprisings --sparked by the Self-immolation of a Tunisian unemployed graduate-- would “liberate Jerusalem” and restore the city’s days of glory.
“We will have a new Islamic state based on Sharia (Islamic law) arbitration, and we will free Palestine and build a state of succession to the prophecy,” she added.
Israel captured Jerusalem along with the rest of the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war.
Palestinians want the city, currently occupied by Israel, to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.
In what is thought to be her first public statement, Hassan published a statement in December 2009 urging Muslim women to participate in Jihad.She also suggested that women should provide support for male “mujahideen” by caring for their children.
She also said that women can become suicide bombers, which she refers to as “martyrdom missions.”Hmmmm......."There will be peace when the 'Palestinians' love their children more than they hate us."Read the full story here.

Turkey - Why I must refrain from jokes and prophecy… (HD).By BURAK BEKDİL.How can one not get addicted to this country? It is so full of humor and fun…
At a time when EU-candidate Turkey and the EU have practically no relations other than unsuccessful shooting of unshootable troubles and an increasing slew of verdicts from the European Court of Human Rights for Turkish violations, Turkey’s EU minister, Egemen Bağış, has been awarded the “Most Successful Minister and Politician of the Year 2012” prize (by the prestigious Black Sea Education, Culture and Environment Protection Foundation).
Never heard of this prominent NGO entity? Never mind, I had not either, until its management discovered Mr. Bağış’s ministerial virtues. I would not be surprised if a Turkish Sea Lions Preservation Foundation awarded the “Most Liberal Politician of the Year Prize” to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, or if a Turkish-Vanuatu Alumni Association nominated Interior Minister Idris Naim Şahin for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Naturally, in a country so full of jokes some very important men tend to take my jokes seriously. Once I proposed – and later repented – that Turkey should build its own aircraft carrier, – for most probable missions like an armed conflict with Chile or Papua New Guinea – its own spaceships for Avatar airborne operations and its own long-range missiles. Miraculously, it only took a few months before defense bigwigs announced plans for all three ideas, one after the other. I felt horrified. But that was not all.
I also wrote: “As a columnist who felt a wholehearted responsibility to his employers... I wished to save my bosses from corporate consequences and commented that the [Islamic] headscarf must be allowed not only in universities, but also in kindergarten too.”My 2008 prophecy for veils in the kindergarten has almost been fulfilled as the new primary education bill allows families to send their fourth-grade daughters to imam schools, although there are no female preachers in Islam. Also, fourth-grade girl students will be allowed to wear the headscarf during Quran/Islam classes in primary schools. And now there is more, according to a news story in Hürriyet.
Under a bill drafted by the Environment and City Planning Ministry, shopping malls, corporate management buildings, wedding halls, cinemas, theaters, opera houses, museums, schools, hospitals, public buildings, ports and airports, hotels, university dormitories and metro stations must have a small mosque (masjid) and kindergarten on their premises if they wish to be granted building licenses. Finally, the mosque and the kindergarten have come together!
For the benefit of the country I love perhaps I should refrain from prophesying and making distasteful jokes.Hmmmm.....A great and courageous Turkish writer!I salute your bravery.Read the full story here.More from this writer here.

Turkey - Islamic Censorship on the rise for writers, report reveals.(HD).Forty-six books were banned, withdrawn from the market or saw their authors sued during the last year in Turkey, while dozens of writers and publishers were tried for their published works, a recent report by Turkey’s Publishers Union has revealed.
“Judicial oppression is gradually increasing, and arrested writers and journalists whose trials are pending have been portrayed as terrorists by state officials,” the report said.
Probes against publications have been justified on the grounds that the works are defamatory, feature obscene content or illegal terrorist propaganda, humiliate religious values or attack personal rights.
The report also lists cases opened against expressions published on social media outlets.
Internationally known books such as Chuck Palahniuk’s bestseller “Snuff,” which was translated into Turkish under the title “Ölüm Pornosu” (Death Porn) and William S. Burroughs’ 1961 novel “The Soft Machine” are among the books banned in Turkey.
The report also drew attention to the cases of social media users. One such case it that of a 17-year-old teenager, who faces two years in prison for “insulting the prime minister and Cabinet ministers” on his Facebook account, according to the report.
“Religion absurdity,” an open debate subject in an online dictionary known as the Sour Times (Ekşi Sözlük), also resulted in a case against an Internet user for allegedly “insulting religious values.”
Caricaturist Bahadır Baruter was also put on trial for allegedly “insulting the religious values adopted by a part of the population,” with prosecutors demanding that he be sentenced to one year in prison for the alleged offense.
Journalists fired for “criticizing the government” were also mentioned in the report. Nuray Mert, Banu Güven, Ece Temelkuran, Cüneyt Ülsever, Ruşen Çakır and Mehmet Altan were counted as oppositional columnists who lost their jobs after being targeted by the government, the report said.
The process of oppression has resulted in appearance of a strong mechanism of self- censorship to appear in the Turkish media, the report said.Hmmmm........How many writers are there in Israeli prisons?Read the full story here.

Failed Russian ICBM crosses Azerbaijan, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.HT: IsraelMatzav.Around 8:45 on Thursday night, there was a glow in the skies over Israel. This UFO was not a Martian spaceship, but it probably was a Russian ICBM.Later Thursday, Russian news agency Novosti quoted the Defense Ministry in Moscow, which confirmed that a missile was test-fired from the Astrakhan region in central Russia. The trail of light seen in Israel was also reported in Armenia, Turkey, Cyprus, Lebanon, Jordan and other countries in the region.

According to a statement issued by Russia's Defense Ministry, crews belonging to the army's strategic missile division successfully test-fired a ballistic missile at 9:39 pm, Moscow time. A video shot in the area the missile was fired from showed parts of the missile falling. However, the clip was removed a few minutes after being posted.

Israeli Astronomical Association Chairman Dr. Yigal Pat-El said that it is quite possible that the unidentified flying object reported by residents nationwide was a ballistic missile test.

"It most likely spun out of control and its remnants and the fuel was what people saw. It reached a height of 200-300 kilometers and that's why it was seen from so many locations," he told Ynet.

"We saw a large trail of light traveling from a distant spot in the sky," Dorit from northern Israel reported earlier. "We could not see the source of the light. The trail was massive. It was an unusual sight. Moments later we saw swirling movement where the light was coming from."

Concerned citizens in Armenia and Lebanon also called their local police stations after seeing the unusual glowing light. One Lebanese citizen reported seeing the light in the sky and in response an American web-surfer said it might be a military test. The Lebanese woman laughingly responded with: "A military test? Here?"Read the full story here.

In Memory Of Alexander Munch (1948 - 2012).

Israeli Six-Day War Vet.

Previous Blogs here and here."
If liberty means anything at all, it means
the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." George Orwell.

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Irshad Manji.

"Muslim refusenik" is a phrase Manji uses to identify herself as someone who refuses to "join an army of robots in the name of God.".

Ayaan Hirsi Ali .

Wafa Sultan .

"Telling the truth after proper investigation is the height of courage." - Wafa Sultan.

Hagarism - The Making of the Islamic World.

Pakistani Women's Human Rights Organisation

Persian2English -

Stop Child Executions

I Stand With Israel !

Koran 7:7, where G-d Himself bequeaths the Land of Israel to the Jews, as a nation who thought themselves weak, and blesses them with goodness.Source

Shariah: The Threat to America

This book is based on the statements of the world's leading Shariah authorities and Shariah academic scholars.

The Abuse of Holocaust Memory.

Myths of Islam

"Religion does not require women to veil their hands, feet and faces or enjoin any special type of veil. Tribal custom must not impose itself on the free will of the individual."

Amanullah Khan - King of Afghanistan (1919-1929).

The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, head of Al-Azhar, the highest seat of learning in the Sunni world.“The niqab is a tradition and has nothing to do with Islam,” said Sheikh Tantawi, vowing to ban it in Al-Azhar schools.After the girl complied he insisted she should not wear it any more.“I tell you again that the niqab has nothing to do with Islam and it is only a mere custom. I understand the religion better than you and your parents.” The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar imam vowed to issue a ban against the face-veil in all schools linked to Al-Azhar.“Source

The Jewish Holocaust.

The Armenian Holocaust.

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